British Archaeologists May Have Greater Chance to Study Human Bones

Submitted by Milica on Mon, 2004-05-31 08:25

NewScientist.com: Archaeological excavations throughout Great Britain have unearthed and studied
many human remains. Now they have received guidelines for reburial of bones
discovered on digs.
Researchers and construction workers in England are familiar with human bones.
They often find them while excavating sites. Until recently, no guidelines
existed on what to do with remains, and they were usually reinterred in
Christian cemeteries. Now anthropologists hope that remains will be more
accessible for study, rather than following examples such as Melbourn in
Cambridgeshire where a number of Anglo-Saxon remains were reburied in Christian
graves, despite the fact that they were most certainly pagan.

"Their research potential was massive," says archaeologist Corinne Duhig of the
University of Cambridge, "but everybody caved in."